Site Mobile Navigation

Before the Olympic Trials, There’s This Big High School Meet

Missy Franklin, center, is expected to contend for multiple Olympic medals this summer.Credit
Anya Semenoff for The New York Times

CENTENNIAL, Colo. — For Missy Franklin, the snowstorm that immobilized this city last Friday seemed heaven-sent. Housebound by nearly 20 inches of snow, Franklin reread the third book in “The Hunger Games” trilogy, completed her physics and English homework, watched “The Sound of Music,” texted with friends and took turns cuddling on the couch with her mother and father.

It was as if Mother Nature called a timeout to give Franklin a respite from a blizzard of attention that shows no signs of abating.

At the United States Olympic swimming trials in June, Franklin, 16, will be a favorite to make the team for the London Games. After a five-medal performance at the world championships in Shanghai last summer, she is expected to contend for multiple Olympic medals. But first, she will represent Regis Jesuit, the reigning champion, at the 5A state high school and diving championships in Fort Collins, Colo., on Friday and Saturday.

When Franklin won two individual events at last weekend’s league meet, the state meet felt the ripple effect. Tickets for the preliminary and finals sessions at the Edora Pool Ice Center, which seats roughly 1,000, quickly sold out. A line for the remaining tickets is expected to form outside in the freezing cold several hours before Friday’s 4 p.m. preliminaries and Saturday’s 2 p.m. finals. The meet will be carried by ESPN3 and covered by state and national media outlets.

Franklin, who is 6 feet 1 inch, with pale skin, long brown hair and a smile that never dims, is at once a pacesetter and a throwback, her high school participation akin to a grandmaster showing up at Central Park to play a few games of speed chess.

“A lot of people think of swimming as an individual sport, but I’ve always loved the team aspect,” Franklin said.

Michael Phelps, to whom the versatile Franklin often is compared, turned pro 11 years ago when he was 16, forsaking the chance to compete in high school and college to sign endorsement deals that made him an instant millionaire.

Franklin so far has turned down roughly $150,000 in prize money and untold riches in sponsorships for the privilege of swimming alongside and against girls who cannot keep up with her. In the 100-yard backstroke, she is eight seconds faster than her next best teammate and almost three seconds faster than her closest in-state rival.

During a four-day stretch of FINA World Cup short-course races in Europe last fall, Franklin won seven events and set a world record in the 200-meter backstroke. She would have left Europe with $73,000 if she had been able to accept prize money.

A quick economics lesson delivered by her parents, Dick and D. A., did little to sway Franklin, who also wants to swim in college. Her father, Dick, a regional director of a clean-technologies company, pointed out that her mother, D. A., a physician, did not earn in all of 2011 what Franklin might have pocketed in less than a week of racing in Europe.

“It was definitely a hard conversation for me to hear,” Franklin said. “I don’t think about money the same way my parents do.”

She added, “Even after going through that conversation, for me, I couldn’t put a price on swimming in high school.”

To the consternation of some people connected with United States Swimming, Franklin is missing an Olympic trials tune-up meet in a 50-meter pool in Missouri this weekend to swim at the state meet, which will be in a 25-yard pool.

“If I just focused on the Olympics 24/7, it’s going to add so much pressure,” Franklin said. “It’s additional thoughts that just aren’t needed.”

When her high school coach, Nick Frasersmith, was completing the state meet entries, he asked Franklin which events she wished to race. She had qualified in the 50, 100 and 200 freestyles, the 100 backstroke and the 200 individual medley. She told him to put her in whichever events he thought would help the team the most. So he entered Franklin in the 200 freestyle and 100 backstroke. She will also swim two relays.

Franklin’s best friend and Regis Jesuit classmate, Abby Cutler, said she believed that Franklin, an only child, embraced high school swimming because it leaves her with the best of both worlds: parents who dote on her at home and a dedicated sisterhood at school.

Franklin mentioned tie-dye parties and inside jokes that are wrung for laughs for months and the songs she mischievously compiles on a CD that get stuck in her teammates’ heads. “That’s the thing I’m best at,” she said, beaming.

Cutler said that when she surpassed the state qualifying standards in the 200 and 500 freestyles, the first person who called to congratulate her was Franklin.

“She was just as excited for me as we were for her when she set the world record,” Cutler said.

But the pressure of sustaining friendships and maintaining high grades while managing swimming expectations is a lot for even Franklin’s broad shoulders to bear. In the months since she insinuated herself into the Olympic conversation with her performance at the world championships, those closest to her have noticed signs of strain.

Photo

Missy Franklin's mother, D. A., has taken a sabbatical from her job to assist her daughter.Credit
Anya Semenoff for The New York Times

One recent morning Franklin accepted a ride to a morning workout and to school from her mother because she was too tired to drive herself. Franklin was unusually quiet as her mother ticked off a few of the most recent requests from news media outlets, charities and companies wanting a few minutes of Franklin’s time.

“I don’t get it,” she told her mother. “I haven’t even made the Olympic team yet. I don’t deserve all this attention.”

Unsure how to reply, Franklin’s mother said: “I know there are lots of things happening right now. But when we look back on this year, we’re going to say how exciting it was.”

The Olympic trials, which start June 25 in Omaha, are an eight-day stress test. In most events, only the top two finishers will qualify to compete in London. If Franklin needs reminding that no Olympic invitation is written in stone, she needs to talk only to Tori Trees Smith, the Regis Jesuit girls’ assistant junior varsity coach.

In 1984, Trees Smith, then 19, was not considered a favorite to make the Olympic team, but she did, in the 200-meter backstroke. John Smith, who became her husband, was expected to qualify, but got sick and did not.

“I don’t want Missy to feel like she’s letting people down if she doesn’t make the team,” D. A. Franklin said. “We’re always telling her if she does her best and doesn’t make the team, we’ll be proud of her.”

The spotlight on Franklin has grown so large it now encompasses her parents. Before the start of the league meet, Franklin’s mother was approached in the stands by another parent, who said: “Your daughter’s so humble, so sweet. She’s awesome and I cannot wait to see her swim this summer.” Then the woman asked Franklin’s mother to autograph the wristband given to all of the spectators to show that they had paid.

Franklin’s mother is taking a sabbatical from her job working with developmentally disabled patients to serve essentially as Franklin’s personal assistant. Her tasks include not only compiling Franklin’s schedule but keeping the United States Anti-Doping Agency abreast of her whereabouts at all times in case she is randomly chosen to provide a urine sample.

It is not easy keeping Franklin’s whereabouts straight. Her club team, the Colorado Stars, does not have its own facility, so it rents time at more than a half-dozen pools in a typical week. And Franklin’s daily schedule is as crowded as a presidential candidate’s.

The day before the high school league preliminaries were scheduled to take place, she rose at 4:15 a.m. and was on the road by 4:30. Franklin was in the water by 5 for a 90-minute practice, then returned home, drank a couple of large cartons of chocolate milk and napped for an hour.

At 8, Franklin had an egg-and-sausage biscuit while studying for a vocabulary test. One of the 25 words whose definitions she had to commit to memory was ennui. Franklin had the meaning down cold, but the concept of discontent borne of boredom is completely foreign to her.

By 9:30, she was in class at Regis Jesuit, a Catholic high school with separate buildings for boys and girls. She left campus at lunch, munching on a ham-and-cheese sandwich as she drove 15 minutes to the Steadman Hawkins clinic for a dry-land conditioning session with the trainer Loren Landow, who also works with Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow, whom her friends insist is only slightly more celebrated in and around Denver right now than Franklin.

Her dry-land training partner, Kara Lynn Joyce, swam in the 2004 and 2008 Olympics. She is 10 years older than Franklin, whom she treats like a kid sister. While performing squats, Franklin told Joyce about a senior at a rival school who had openly wondered why Franklin would compete in high school swimming and deny others their moments of glory.

“It all stems from jealousy,” Joyce assured Franklin.

Franklin returned to Regis Jesuit for the final hour of the school day and stayed for swim practice. Swimming in a lane by herself, she completed a 5,775-yard workout that her club coach, Todd Schmitz, had made for her. Meanwhile, her Regis Jesuit teammates laughed and bounced up and down and practiced their starts and relay exchanges and swam no more than 4,000 yards under Frasersmith’s direction.

An hour after her teammates were done, Franklin completed her workout. She arrived at a body-shaving and pasta-eating party at Cutler’s house after everyone was nearly finished with dessert. Franklin filled her paper plate with two kinds of pasta and salad, slipped into a seat and dived into conversation with girls who know her as Goober Face.

Her high school teammates, many of whom Franklin has known for years, keep a close watch on her, looking for any signs of cracks in her preternatural composure.

“She never tells you when she’s stressed, but I can always tell,” Cutler said. “ You can see it in her eyes.”

By the time Franklin left the Thursday night party, the snowstorm had begun. Before she fell into bed at 10:15, exhausted after an 18-hour day, Franklin learned that she would wake up to the first snow day of the year.

“I was so happy,” Franklin said. “I rarely do two swim practices and weights in the same day. I was going to be absolutely pooped if I had to go to school and swim today.”

Instead she was able to curl up on the couch and watch “The Sound of Music,” her favorite movie, while wrapped like a burrito in the Care Bears fleece blanket that she sewed in eighth grade. Franklin said she never tired of watching the film, which came out in 1965, 30 years before she was born.

She sang along to “I Have Confidence,” humming the part that goes, “I’ve always longed for adventure/To do the things I’ve never dared/And here I’m facing adventure/Then why am I so scared?”

A version of this article appears in print on February 10, 2012, on page B10 of the New York edition with the headline: Just One of the Girls. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe